Heresiarchs and other DFX "supervillains"

I’m not a huge redditer, but I’ve spent a little bit of time there lately. I had a weird warning, that my account had been flagged for breaking Rule 1; threatening physical violence. This is, of course, absurd, but there was no link that worked to where I supposedly did this. I can only imagine that they think my “threat” to PLONK someone was a threat of physical violence, which is course ridiculous, because PLONKing is old Usenet slang for “adding to my ignore list.” On top of that, my most recent Youtube video, where I just rambled on about worldbuilding changes in my setting got a few rando comments; one guy asked what this was for, and another guy answered him saying that he hadn’t watched the video, but he imagined that it was beginner worldbuilding advice. This of course is not true; I’m actually doing my worldbuilding via my blog and Youtube channel sometimes. It’s a rambly exposition of my actual worldbuilding, not a discussion on worldbuilding generally. 

The biggest takeaway here is to reinforce my beliefs that 1) most people are idiots, 2) people are the worst, and 3) I’m entirely justified in posting on my blog and channel entirely for my own benefit and my own benefit alone and ignoring everyone else. I shouldn’t even post on reddit at all, because it’s full of idiots and snowflakes. Especially in r/DnD which literally has a gayed up version of the D&D logo as its group banner, but r/osr is only marginally better. And I’m not even going to address those dumb youtuber comments. Just watch the video if you wonder what its about! Or don’t, I don’t care. If you’re asking whether or not you should watch the video: I don’t care! I’m not going to spend time explaining what it is for you. Yes, yes… I probably should have put an actual description in the description field, which I couldn’t be bothered with this time around. That may have contributed. But again; this is really just for my own benefit. Stream of consciousness rambling about my worldbuilding activities isn’t really meant for anyone else, and I put it out there in public just because that way its easier for me to find and reference. Plus, at least my son-in-law watches those. Although I don’t know for sure how interested he is either, honestly.

Anyway, that slight venting out of the way, let me come up with a quick and dirty outline for what I want to do with my “supervillains”. These mostly used to be the Heresiarchs of good ole Dark•Heritage Mk. IV, heavily based on Glen Cook’s The Ten Who Were Taken from The Black Company series of novels. However, there isn’t really any significant difference between them and iconic D&D villains like Vecna or Strahd or Acererak or even Iggwilv. However, rather than being singular villains, as those guys tend to be, I presume that there’s a complicated web of relationships between these guys. Unlike D&D villains, however, the PCs will never get into the league where they can face them in a fair one on one fight. These guys will always be in a completely different league to the PCs, who only can rise to tenth level in my game at most. Plus, they’re lower power anyway. Why have villains that the PCs can’t fight, you may ask? Well, again, you should read The Black Company books. I mentioned that already, but it’s the perfect model for them. These villains are powerful, but they’re also paranoid and sociopathic. They can be outmaneuvered and defeated, but not in a straight up fair fight. There’s a careful balance between them and the rest of their crowd; if someone new comes along, then they usually want to stop him from joining their club, so to speak.

Many years ago, a gaming friend of mine wrote something that I think resonates quite well. I was able to find it with a Google search, so here it is:

My PCs recently had a sit-down with nasty old [supervillain] and in getting tidbits of information about assorted bad guys they asked, "What do these guys want?" [Her] answer: "They want to save the world. We all want to save the world. From each other."

My thinking is that when you perceive a threat, and you want to counter it, you need to increase your own power to the point where you can face that threat. And of course, in doing so, you become perceived as a threat by others. So many of my "bad guys" became bad in order to defeat something terrible -- and in the process became terrible themselves. So now there's a variety of individuals who are near demi-gods in power, all of whom consider (and rightly, it seems) each other to be terrible threats to the world. So now they're all jockeying for position, trying to eliminate each other.

They don't see themselves as bad guys -- they think they're saving the world. Which they are, because unless these other nasties are stopped, things are going to be very uncomfortable. The problem is that they're just as nasty as the others.

I don't know that I accept that literally. These villains probably know quite well that they're terrible. But now they're just spiteful, miserable pricks who think burning the world down is preferable to just being miserable on their own. 

Anyway, the rest of this post will be fairly art heavy, because I’ll highlight some of my supervillains with a very brief description, and then have them also illustrated via DALL-E 3. Exactly their role in the setting NOW and where they are is usually TBD.

Amrruk the Ancient was based on an old prestige class from an early 3e splatbook, the Oozemaster. To be honest, he’s more based on the word “oozemaster” than on any details of the prestige class, which I probably haven’t read in the better part of twenty years. He’s a lich, covered in slime; a kind of slightly humanoid Juiblex, maybe, or a combination of a lich and a shoggoth. Curiously, I haven’t yet determined if Juiblex is the typo or Jubilex, since I see both versions out there in the wild. 

Bernat Haspar de Ruze is a more “normal” lich, associated with traveling on the Flying Dutchman-like haunted ship. He’s been bound to the ship, which from the perspective of the other big bad guys keeps him more or less neutralized, but that doesn’t mean that he still isn’t amazingly dangerous to anyone else out there sailing that he comes across. And secretly, of course, he’s working on releasing himself from being bound to his ship, and is quite close to that goal.

Hutran Kutir is the Hex-King and founder of Baal Hamazi; the semi-mythical father of all kemlings. He was killed many generations ago, but he yet lingers, because like The Ten Who Were Taken and the rest of these bad guys, death isn’t necessarily as final as one would like to hope. There are rumors of his stirring in Baal Hamazi from a long slumber (or death) which is causing waves among the other bad guys.

Jairan Neferirkare is a dark, Gothic necromancer and daemonologist; unlike many of these bad guys, she retains a human-like beauty. She’s more of a super-vampire than a lich, perhaps, although for these guys, the distinction is usually more cosmetic rather than significant.

Kadashman, He Who Peers Into the Void. Another character who’s concept was taken from an old 3e splatbook prestige class, in this case the original printing of the Alienist. If Kadashman was once human, he certainly isn’t anymore.

Kefte Taran, the Fate-spinner, the Witch-Lich. I think the Fatespinner might also have been an early 3e prestige class, but if so, I remember nothing about it anymore. The most cautious, the most paranoid, and with Madame Web (the original, not the stupid newer movie from a couple of years ago) of the entire bunch.

Master of Vermin. I know for sure that the Verminlord was an old prestige class, but I doubt that anything other than the name and my own interpretation of what the concept would be based on that name survive. I see him as the patron and maybe even creator (via corruption and chaos warping, not ex nihilo, of course) of the ratling race and a plague themed villain. Almost like Nurgle (Nergal) from Warhammer and The Horned Rat… except that he looks more humanoid still.

Seggeir Sherihum is Kathulos from Robert E. Howard’s Skull-face. Please; if you read this, be sure you find an original unedited and unexpurgated copy. There’s a lot of bowdlerized for woke political correct nonsense masquerading as this original story. Anyway, Kathulos was himself a somewhat derivative villain; an undead, Atlantean Fu Manchu, with all of the Yellow Peril themes incorporated, but made much more fantastic and much more exotic. Although not actually confirmed, it seems pretty obvious that Kathulos was at least somewhat based on Cthulhu; he’s a specifically undersea menace, dredged up from the bottom of the ocean, and the name is almost identical. Plus, Howard and Lovecraft of course wrote back and forth and Howard is on record as calling “Call of Cthulhu” a masterpiece.